


The Evil Within 3: Redemption

by samii_senpai



Category: The Evil Within (Video Game), The Evil Within 2 - Fandom
Genre: Back into STEM, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Kidman knows, M/M, post-the evil within 2, where is Joseph?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 09:34:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13924362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samii_senpai/pseuds/samii_senpai
Summary: “I want to know what happened to Joseph.”He took a seat in the booth across from her and waved the bartender into the back. Kidman’s thoughts flashed to the last time they were here. When she had told him his daughter was alive, and then dragged him back into Mobius’ waiting claws—an unwilling victim of fate. Only a handful of months had passed since then, but it felt like years.----Seb goes on an adventure to save his partner.





	1. The True Consequence

**Author's Note:**

> If you catch any mistakes please let me know!
> 
> Thanks and enjoy~

“I want to know what happened to Joseph.”  
He took a seat in the booth across from her and waved the bartender into the back. Kidman’s thoughts flashed to the last time they were here. When she had told him his daughter was alive, and then dragged him back into Mobius’ waiting claws—an unwilling victim of fate. Only a handful of months had passed since then, but it felt like years.  
Today, the bar was empty. There were no ominous Mobius operatives waiting in polished, black suits to watch her back against her volatile ex-boss, but she could have done with the backup. His face said he wasn’t here to play games, which was unfortunate because Juli Kidman wasn’t looking forward to this particular conversation in the slightest.  
As soon as she’d picked up her cell and seen ‘SEBASTIAN’ appear across the dimly lit screen, she’d known what was coming. Barely two weeks out and he was already itching for another task. Honestly, the man didn’t know how to relax. For Christ’s sake, he had only just made it out of STEM, regaining a long-lost daughter and losing his wife for a second time in the process. Now, he was already wanting to delve down another Mobius rabbit-hole. Psycho bastard. Kidman had known they’d have this conversation at some point, but she had been hoping it would’ve taken him a little longer to get around to necessitating it.   
“Finally get tired of your vacation?” She asked, pointedly ignoring his previous question. “I would’ve thought I’d be seeing you sooner than this.” Kidman could see the annoyance at her dodge settling over Sebastian’s features.  
“Yes, well, I finally have someone to stay home with, don’t I?” He spoke just a touch too dryly and the way he said it made it feel like he was daring her to keep up with this new direction of conversation.   
Shit. This was not a conversation she wanted to touch with a ten-foot-pole. That bastard knew she felt responsible for what had happened to his family. He also knew she might as well be allergic to feelings—particularly familial ones.   
She took a pause to sip her beer.   
“Fair enough. Want a drink?”  
“I’m abstaining.”  
“For Lily?”  
“Who else?”  
“Right…” Another sip. “So. Joseph.”  
“Joseph.” He agreed.  
Kidman sighed. “I guess I did promise you… but, I can’t promise you’re going to like it.”  
“With the way you’re acting, I already assumed I wouldn’t.” He said flatly. “Cut the shit, Kidman. Just tell me where he is.”  
Kidman drew her lips in a hard line and fiddled with her bottle. She knew her stubborn silence was a bit childish. It wasn’t going to change the outcome of this talk, and Sebastian would only become more frustrated the longer she made him wait—he wasn’t a very patient man. Yet, if she was being honest with herself, she was ashamed of what had happened to her ex-boss’ partner.  
As she looked up to meet his unyielding gaze, she could see that the shallow well of patience Sebastian possessed was beginning to run dry.  
“STEM.” She answered finally. “I think.”  
She waited for that to sink in.   
Sebastian blinked at her. She could see his features shuffle through a variety of emotions, trying to come up with an appropriate response. He seemed to not be able to find one.  
“STEM. You think.” He parroted back to her incredulously. He said it slowly, displeasure clear in his voice. She could practically see his temper mounting.   
She knew it was a shit answer, but she had warned him that he wasn’t going to like it. “I did warn you that you weren’t going to like it.”  
“Well, you were fucking right. What the actual hell, Kidman?” He said a little too loudly.  
“Quiet down,” she shushed him, even though it didn’t really matter. She just wasn’t a fan of being yelled at. “You already told me you were prepared not to like it.”  
“I wasn’t fucking prepared to not like it this much.” he lowered his voice, but only just. He was still as dangerously disapproving as before. “How the fuck is this even possible. Myra destroyed STEM. If he was in there, he would be dead.”  
“He’s not dead.” She reminded him.  
His response was little more than a grumble.  
Kidman ignored him and kept talking. “I think he’s trapped under the main STEM system. But, he is alive.”   
“Yeah. Because your word means anything to me.”  
Kidman scowled. “Fuck off. I’m being honest with you now, aren’t I?”  
“Are you?” He shot back.   
“If you are so set on doubting me, then why are you even here?”  
Sebastian glared at her but didn’t respond.  
“What a fucking waste of time.” Kidman got up to leave.   
As hurt as she was by his scepticism, Kidman found she couldn’t fault the man for his distrust. She knew he had more than enough reason not to take her at her word after everything that had happened these past years they had been acquainted. She knew better than anyone. Still, she couldn’t see the point in staying if he was just going to be suspicious of everything she told him. Truly, she didn’t want to lie about any of this and if she had wanted to hide the truth, she wouldn’t have told him about Joseph in the first place.  
As she moved for the door, Sebastian caught her arm. Kidman startled, and her free hand instinctively went to the holster at her side. But, Sebastian didn’t pull. Just held in place in a grip easily broken if she so chose. She looked to him. His seemed conflicted.   
“Wait.” He said. “Don’t…don’t go.”  
Kidman paused.  
“I believe you. I just…”  
Kidman didn’t have it in her to walk out on him. Not when it had been she herself who dragged them both into this mess in the first place. She was the reason Joseph was down there, so she sat back down with a sigh. “It sucks. I know.”  
Sebastian huffed out a humorless laugh, “’It sucks’?”  
“You know any better words to describe this situation.”  
Her ex-boss grumbled in response and silence settled over them as the conversation lulled once again as both of them tried to decide on how to respond.   
“I know…that it’s a lot to take in.” Kidman began slowly, “I’m truly sorry for your loss. He was a good man. I didn’t know him very well, but I at least knew that…”  
“What do you mean you’re ‘sorry for my loss’? You said he wasn’t dead.” Sebastian began dangerously.  
“Seb…you can’t honestly think…”  
“If Joseph is in there then I’m going down after him—”   
“How the hell are you going to do that? STEM is destroyed!”   
“—with or without you.”  
“You can’t really be serious!”  
“So, you think we should just leave him down there?!”  
“What else can we do?” She demanded. “STEM is gone. No Beacon, no Union, just nothing. And even if we could go back… have you already forgotten what happened in there?”  
“All the more reason to get him out!”   
“I don’t even know if he’s really there! And if he is, I have no idea where! We’d be going in blind. There is no way of knowing what we’d find down there and no way of knowing if we could even get out—!”  
“What do you mean? We’d get out just like last time.”  
Kidman gave a frustrated huff. “I told you. He’s under STEM. Deeper. We know so little about it, our researchers didn’t even give it a name. Don’t you think if you could come out of that, one of the Mobius members we got stuck down there would have figured it out already?”  
Kidman could see the change in his face clear as day. Like he was remembering something previously forgotten.  
“Sykes.” He voiced quietly, in revelation.   
“Who?”  
“Julian Sykes. One of the agents down in Union.” He explained. “He wanted out. He was desperate. He thought he found a back door, but…”  
Kidman nodded knowingly. “It happened more frequently than anyone would like to admit. I’m sure there were many more cases of such disappearances than I even know of…and I could tell you of quite a few.”  
“Three-in-four.” He murmured.  
“So, you already know then.”  
Sebastian nodded solemnly.  
“Kidman,” he implored. “We have to go after him.”  
Kidman looked down at her bottle and sighed for what felt like the hundredth time.  
“I know.”

\-----

The noise was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. He had been hearing it on and off ever since he found himself in this godforsaken place and, like everything else around here, it was torture.  
The sound was high and sharp, giving off a feeling he imagined was similar to driving shards of glass through one’s eardrums. It clashed against your skull like the hammer of a bell, drove itself deep into your skin and tissue until your bones were vibrating with it.   
And, it went even deeper still. More than just physical pain. The sharp ring ate away at your mind. your energy, your will. All were slowly stripped away the longer it went on. There were times it felt as if it would never end.  
Sebastian dreaded the time that it wouldn’t.  
At the present, this noise was doing something terrible to Joseph. His face was cracking open. The bloody faults webbed their way across his features and down his neck and arms. From them, something was bubbling up, breaking its way to the surface. It looked almost as though his blood was boiling out of his veins. It came even from his nose, his mouth, and his ears. The entirety of his face and body was effervescing.  
He bared his teeth and Sebastian could see they were going yellow and rotten, his gums bloody. The crimson liquid spilt from the corners of his lip and down his chin. Looking into his eyes, Sebastian could see they were yellowing as well. They had taken on a hazy and crazed quality. He was not himself anymore, that much was obvious. He looked at Sebastian and gnashed his teeth.  
Sebastian held hands out in front of him and took a slow step back. The thing that used to be Joseph growled.   
“Don’t make me do this, Joseph.” He said as he reached for his gun.  
The deranged man charged at the movement. Sebastian’s fingers tried to close around his weapon but, before he could, he was slammed into bodily. Joseph’s madness made him even stronger than he was, and Sebastian tripped backwards with the force of it. His partner’s hands gripped at his throat and squeezed tight, cutting off his air. He grappled desperately against Joseph’s shoulders for purchase, feeling the boiling skin pop and ooze under the pressure he placed there.   
He couldn’t find his hold. He was going to die.  
Just as his vision began to go fuzzy, he rallied one final effort from his tiring limbs. He dug his nails into the breaking skin of Joseph’s arms. Joseph shrieked in pain and his grip loosened for only a second. But it was all the time Sebastian needed. He tossed him back across the room. The creature stumbled away a couple yards and stopped. Just stood, panting in rage, with its head hung low.   
Sebastian kept a wary eye to him, his hand still itching toward the gun at his side. He didn’t want to hurt Joseph, but he hadn’t wanted to hurt Connelly either. He had gone mad like this too, and Sebastian had been forced to kill him because of it.  
Slowly, slowly, the head lifted—  
Sebastian jolted awake gasping and covered in sweat. Immediately, he began to panic. Confusion was overtaking him in his half-asleep state. He tried to find sense in where he was, eyes flickering around the room bathed in early morning light for something, anything, that would ground him. As he struggled, he began to become aware of something small pressing against his side. Sebastian jolted away from it, imagining in that instant it was something sinister.  
Lily sat up sleepily and reached a small hand to his arm.  
“It’s okay, Daddy.” She said, her tone spoke of far more wisdom and understanding than a child of her age should possess. “It’s only me. We’re at home. You had a bad dream.”  
Sebastian took a series of calming breaths as he slowly came back to himself.   
He felt ashamed that Lily had to see her father this way. After everything, was he too broken to be the dad that Lily needed him to be?   
He pulled Lily into his lap and hugged her tightly.   
“It’s okay.” He repeated, mostly to himself, as he felt her arms wind around his neck. “It was just a dream.”

\---

Kidman was waiting for him in his driveway as he helped his daughter catch the bus.   
“I guess it's lucky you got her out when you did. You were able to enroll her in the new school year.” Kidman observed.  
He hummed in agreement. “Maybe I should be thankful Mobius at least allowed Myra to school her. She’s right on track for her age.”  
“I don’t think that’s something you need to be thankful for. It’s practically bare minimum, as far as caring for children goes.”   
They stood side by side in front of Kidman’s car as the bus drove away. Sebastian waved after it and saw Lily waving back through one of the windows near the front. Kidman turned her head towards him. “I don’t think you have anything to thank them for.”  
“No. I guess I don’t.”  
She moved to the car.   
“Get in.” She ordered. “We’re going on a field trip.”  
Sebastian raised his eyebrows but otherwise didn’t comment.   
“A field trip to where?” He asked, moving to the passenger’s side and getting in as instructed.  
“You’ll see.”   
He did see. It took him less than a quarter of the ride to determine where they were headed.   
They didn’t speak for the entirety of the trip. Kidman drove, and Sebastian watched out the window as the suburbs where he lived around Krimson City faded into empty desert. It took them two hours to arrive; Sebastian was bored out of his mind.  
When they reached their destination, he was face to face with the Mobius Headquarters once again.  
“Some field trip,” he mumbled. It felt surreal to be back at this place so soon.  
“Did you really think we were going to be able to do this without coming back?” Kidman was already walking towards the entrance, not even turning around to check if Sebastian was following.   
He didn’t answer. Of course, he had known they would need to be coming back. But, it didn’t make doing it any easier. He took the first harrowing step back to his own personal hell.  
Kidman looked back. “We don’t have to do this, you know.”  
“Yes, we do.”  
She shook her head. “You’re one crazy son of a bitch, you know that? Are you sure you don’t secretly like it down there? Why not build a nice vacation home? Visit during the holidays.”  
“Kidman.” He warned as he caught up to her.  
“I know, I know… It’s just…” She stopped just shy of the large double-doored entrance. The mood began to feel a bit despondent around her. “This is my fault, isn’t it? Joseph being stuck in there?”  
Sebastian said nothing, so she continued.  
“I shot him. I trapped him. And it was my fault he was down there anyway. It was my fault you were down there. Both times. And now it’s my fault we have to go back.” Kidman paused in her self-loathing, staring at the doors ahead. “It’s just… everything about this is my fault. And you’re both paying the price for it.”  
“What are you saying?” he asked.  
“If we can get this thing up and running… you shouldn’t go.”  
“No.” He shot it down instantly, “That’s not an option. I’m—”  
Kidman cut in. “One of us is going to have to stay behind anyway. The machine can’t run by itself and you can’t get out without someone waiting to pull you up.”  
“And you think I’m the best one for that job?” He huffed out in abject disbelief.  
“I think that you’ve been down there enough for one lifetime.” She explained. “And I think that Lily needs her father. There is no way of being sure whoever goes in will make it out.”  
He had to admit that she made a little sense, however it was not enough to convince him.  
“And I think that out of the two of us, one has been a Mobius operative for years and actually run this goddamn machine before.” He ground out. “I’ve made it out of STEM twice and last round I was able to pull someone out with me. I’m the best option for rescuing Joseph and you know it. Out of the two of us, he stands more of a chance if it's me.”  
“But—”  
“If you want to atone, when we make it out of this alive you can apologize to both of us by never joining up with shitty organizations ever again. Now enough of this bullshit. We have work to do.”  
Sebastian pushed open the doors and made his way back into the belly of the beast.

\---

Looking back, Sebastian realized he had never really paid much attention to the design of the STEM system. Understandably so, he felt, considering both times he had gone into the machine had been against his will, but now that he was back of his on violation he found himself noticing how unsettling the machine actually was.   
The thing was huge, towering over everything else and reaching the ceiling two stories up. It looked like a brain, which he had no doubt was intentional; thousands of wires stemmed from the core like nerves and connected to the pods set up in a surrounding ring. Each pod was equipped with a monitor, all dark now that there was no power. In the centre, the place Lily had occupied sat empty.  
It was all covered in dust. Even cobwebs were starting to appear from the disuse.  
It was all a bit unnerving.  
“The smell in here is awful.” He commented, sniffing.  
“You say that like you hadn’t expected it to be.”  
All over the building, the bodies of those who died here still lay. In a place that no one had known of, no one had come to clean up. Above them, the Administrator’s body looked down upon them, rotting as it leaned up against the blood-splattered glass.  
Kidman got straight to work.  
She wiped the dust and cobwebs from one of the blank screens and then she was moving around, full of purpose. Watching her, Sebastian felt useless, but frankly, with anything evolving technology, he was useless. He took his place by the entrance and quietly observed, wanting to keep out of her way.   
It didn’t take her long to come to a conclusion.  
“Well,” She said after a round of testing, “everything’s fried.”   
She might as well just have said ‘I told you so’ with how heavily she was implying it.  
“So, what’s the plan? You’re the expert here.”   
Kidman huffed out a laugh. The ‘don’t be stupid’ was clear. “There is none. There’s no way to fix these parts. The people who made them are all dead.” She motioned absently to the Administrator as she backed away from a stubbornly blank screen.  
“Then we’ll find another way.”  
Kidman gave him a look.  
“We are not giving up now.” He was adamant. “We’ve only been trying for half an hour.”  
She shook her head, just as stubborn as he was. “It doesn’t matter how long we try, it’s not going to fix these circuits.”   
“They have to have blueprints here. We could find them, figure out how they did it—”  
“Sebastian, listen to yourself.” She took a step closer, minding the wires around her feet. “Neither one of us is a scientist or an engineer. Sure. We might be able to find some blueprints or notes somewhere in this place, but we wouldn’t be able to make sense of it. Knowing the theory of how something works is different than being able to actually build something like this. This machine is complicated. It’s not some beginner’s treehouse or lab experiment. Getting this wrong would kill you as soon as you tried to use it.”  
Her voice was hard, but her eyes were pleading with him to understand. Looking into them, he could see what she had done, and he was furious.  
“You brought me here because you knew it would be like this.” Sebastian accused. “You knew from the beginning and you brought me here to prove a point.”  
“I brought you here so that you would understand.” Her exasperation with him was showing through. Her voice was rising with it. “Maybe if you could see it for yourself, you would finally accept that this is hopeless!”  
Sebastian shook his head. “No. No, I won’t accept that. There has to be—”  
“There’s not!” She shouted at him, moving forward again. “Give up! The best thing we can do for Joseph is—”  
She wouldn’t dare.  
“Don’t you fucking say it.” He hissed dangerously.  
She squared her shoulders. “I don’t need your permission, you know? I hid Joseph away from Mobius, hired someone I could trust to keep him stable. If I give the word, they’ll—”  
“Shut the fuck up!” He took a threating step forward. Kidman abandoned her posturing and took two back until she hit the keyboard of the computer behind her. “Why would you go through all this work to save him, just to turn around and kill him?!”  
“Because I didn’t know how this would play out back then.” She argued. Her voice had lowered again. She was intimidated. Her hands were held out in front of her, palms to him, in an action of surrender, but she was still trying to convince him of the logic in her words. “I know now. We have no other options. We owe it to him. We owe—”  
“We owe getting him the hell out!” He took another step towards her.  
“We can’t!” She stressed. “And the longer we take to decide, the more he suffers for it.”  
“No.” He growled.   
Another step.  
“What are you going to do, Sebastian?” She asked, voice beginning to tremble with emotion. “Kill me?”  
He didn’t respond. When he took the next step forward, Kidman pulled a gun and aimed for his head.   
“Give. Up.” She demanded.  
He wasn’t afraid. She wouldn’t kill him, not when she knew he was all Lily had left. He kept walking forward and she cocked her weapon.   
“Sebastian. Stop.”  
He didn’t. Now he was directly in front of her, barrel of her gun almost flat against his head. He lifted his hand and pushed her weapon out of his face with no resistance. She flinched, preparing herself for what he was about to do.   
Sebastian reached out, grabbed her by the shoulders and moved her to the side.  
“If you don’t want to help, then go. But, if you kill him I swear to God I’ll hunt you down.” He announced with finality before turning to tinker with the machine himself.  
Kidman seemed shocked by this turn of events. He supposed he should feel at least a little insulted she seemed to think he would kill her. He also supposed it was possible that she would decide to leave him here and he would be stuck, unable to proceed, as she was the only one of them who knew how to run this damn thing.  
Tension was suspended in the air between them for a fourth of a minute before Kidman finally sighed in defeat.  
“If I leave,” she griped, “then who will drive your psychotic ass back home?” Sebastian smirked victoriously as she shooed him out of the way. “Now stop touching things. You’re going to break something.”  
Sebastian willingly complied because, if given the time, he probably would find some way to break the thing more than it already was and he began to explore the large circular room.   
It was impossible to move around without stepping over dead bodies which usually lay in large bloodstains. It felt a little disrespectful. He couldn’t find it in himself to blame soldiers who were just following orders for what happened to him. He threw a look back to Kidman who was currently absorbed in her work.   
Soldiers just following orders, huh? Sebastian guessed he knew a thing or two about that.  
He turned from Kidman and back toward the dead at his feet.   
“Rest in peace.” He mumbled as he stepped carefully over.  
As he moved further and further around the circle of pods, Sebastian started to notice something…odd. A light, barely there, emanating from one of the screens.   
“Hey, Kidman.” He called back to her, “Come check this out…”  
Without turning, he could hear the distinct ‘clack clack’ of her heels against the tile as she approached. “What is it?” She asked, already following his gaze to the light.  
She didn’t wait for a response from him.  
“What the—” She marched past him and immediately started typing on the keyboard in front of the lit display. “This one is…online.” Sebastian listened, but he got the feeling Kidman was talking to herself more than she was talking to him. “I can’t believe it. This should be impossible. How anything could be online without the core is…”  
“It works?” He cut in, needing to get some solid information out of her.  
“Yes...somehow.” Kidman stopped typing and turned to him in awe. “Sebastian, if we have any hope of getting back into STEM at all…this is it. I don’t know the risks of going into the machine without a core but…”   
“If this is our shot we’ve got to take it,” Sebastian said with certainty. “We’ve got to—"  
“Wait.” She cut him off holding up a hand in the universal ‘hold’ signal. “I’m not going to try to talk you out of this anymore…but if we are really going to do this, we have to prepare. For everything. There’s a huge risk going in and there is no guaranty that you will be coming out, with or without Joseph. Go home. Spend a couple days with Lily, think about this, if you still want to do this in one week’s time I’ll help you.”  
“Alright.” He agreed with a single nod.   
“Alright.” She parroted.


	2. Into the Beast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for the lovely comments. Reading them made me so happy :)  
> I tried to work fast on this next chapter. It is a little bit shorter than the first.
> 
> Thank you so much and enjoy chapter 2~~

Sebastian’s parents didn’t really associate themselves with him much anymore, but they still promised to take their granddaughter out of his ‘alcoholic hands’.  
“Mom, I haven’t touched a drink in months.” He had tried to reason.  
“Whatever.” She had replied.   
At least Lily had a place to stay while he was away. He would come back as quickly as possible and get her out of there before his parents could add ‘child abandonment’ to their list of his character flaws.  
When he dropped her off that Saturday he hugged her and said, “I’ll see you soon.”  
She had nodded into his shoulder and held on tight until it was time for him to go.   
\---  
“Are you ready?” Kidman asked as he got into the car.  
“Just drive.” He shot back.  
Maybe he was being a little rude to Kidman who had been working hard all week to make this day possible, spending all her extra time at Mobius Headquarters bug testing as best she was able.  
“Everything is up and running. All that’s left is you strapping in. If you have any doubts, now is the time—”  
“No need. I’m ready.”  
Kidman nodded and turned back to the road, “You got it, Boss.”  
Sebastian turned towards the window and watched his world disappear into the rear-view.  
\---  
Sebastian waited in the looming shadow of the STEM machine as Kidman got everything booted up.  
“Alright,” Kidman finally spoke, turning to him with a sweeping motion of her arm, “your chariot awaits.”  
Sebastian pushed off the wall he was leaning on and walked over to stand beside his ‘chariot’. The metal bathtub of a pod was cleaned of all dust and grime all thanks to Kidman, however, it was next to impossible for anyone to make the perverted contraption look inviting. Seb ran an absent hand along the rim of the pod in a ‘hello-old-friend’ sort of gesture. He turned to face his accomplice.   
“Thank you, Kidman.”  
“Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t even tried the thing.” She grumbled lightly.   
Sebastian smiled and rolled his eyes. “Right. I’ll send you my thanks from down under.”   
“I’ll be waiting.” She replied seriously. “Now get in, or I’ll think you’re stalling.”  
Sebastian huffed a laugh and stepped into the pod one leg after the other, laying down carefully against the padding. In a passing thought, he contemplated how uncomfortable these things really were to lay in.  
“Talk to you soon.” He promised.  
Kidman nodded and started typing script into the computer. “Okay, Sebastian. In three, two, one…”  
Sebastian’s world faded to black.  
Then he was falling.  
\---  
Before anything else, Sebastian felt himself bleeding.   
He opened his eyes and watched as his blood slid languidly down his arm, dripped off his middle finger and landed with a barely-there patter onto the floor below.   
Calming music filled his ears. Was that… “Air on the G String”?  
Below him the metal floor was spotted with congealing blood. Not all of it was his own he noted. A rat skittered across his field of view—ugly and fat, hair matted down against its filthy body—and then out of sight.   
He moved his eyes to his legs above him, then down to the floor below. He was…upside down. Hanging by a rope tied tightly around his ankles.   
This must be a dream.  
Then, as he looked straight ahead he saw… something. Something grotesque.   
He couldn’t even tell if it was human.   
Half of the thing’s face was peeled clean of skin, eye on that side murky and dead. The other side was not much better. The two halves of the creature’s face were separated by a strip of hard metal, secured into place with large screws drilled into the skull. The bottom half of its face was obscured completely by this metal in what appeared to be a muzzle. A collar of spikes hung from its neck. From head-to-toe the thing was bloody. From the torn wife beater it wore and all the way down its arms…   
It blinked and turned, seeming to ignore him in favor of moving toward something hanging to his right that Sebastian couldn’t quite make out in his peripheral. He could hear it though.  
He listened as sickening squelching permeated the air. He was sure the smell of blood would’ve followed had the room had not already been so full the odor already. The sloppy sound of splattering, wet gore hitting the ground was loud in his ears and little flecks of blood and substances which he could only guess the origin of splattered against the right side of his clothes and face until finally something large and very dead landed heavily on the floor.  
The creature drug the thing back into Sebastian’s field of view where he could then identify it as a human torso, severed from its body.  
Sebastian felt his heartbeat escalate to a crescendo in his chest until he felt it would burst out his rib cage. Looking forward, he could see where a hunting knife was protruding from a body directly in front of him. He swung forward to grab it.  
He swung and missed then swung and missed, each time growing more panicked. A cold sweat began to collect on his brow. He could acutely feel the droplets travel down his forehead and into his hairline.   
He swung forward again and clasped the handle, but as his hand was slippery with blood and sweat. The handle of the knife slid from his grip and the body in front of him jostled roughly.   
He swung forward a fourth time, reaching out and gripping the handle in a tighter hold. As he swung back he was able to wrench the knife from between the body’s ribs to the chorus of tearing flesh.  
He did not pause. Reaching up to his dangling legs he cut the rope from where it was holding tight, just above his feet. He hit the ground with a thud, hitting his spine hard against the metal of the floor while trying his best not to land on the knife clasped in his hand.  
He staggered to his feet.  
Looking at the room right-side-up was somehow much worse. All around him were dismembered, hanging bodies. Some were missing arms, some were missing their heads, some were cut from chin to groin, their guts spilling out onto the floor. In front of him, the creature was hunched over a bloody work table, chopping away at his newest slab of meat.  
This place was a slaughterhouse.  
He reached to his side, but his gun holster was empty.  
Fuck.  
Sebastian looked around quickly, trying to come up with some semblance of a plan, and spotted an old rusty door to his left that seemed to lead out of this hellhole.  
Making sure the creature was still occupied with its task, he crept towards it, trying his best to avoid running into the bodies hanging around him, and when he was within arm’s length, he reached out and tugged on the cold metal of the handle.   
The door rattled but would not budge.  
Locked.  
He released a frustrated gust of air between his teeth.  
Where the fuck was he supposed to find a damn key?   
He looked around the bodies towards the little shack of a room where the creature was chopping with wild abandon. Dangling from a hook by the creature’s side, glinting in the dim light, was a key.  
Because of course the fucking key he needed would be right there next to the thing that wanted to kill him most right now.   
He just hoped it was the right fucking key.  
As if by some saving grace, the creature took that moment to stop hacking away at his victim and move to a smaller room in the back, hidden by a dirty sheet.  
Sebastian took his chance, opting to push through the bodies now as opposed to the dodging method he had been employing previously. The bodies wriggled lifelessly as he pushed them this way and that, their blood and viscera staining his hands, but he paid them no mind. His eyes were set on his goal.   
His heartbeat grew faster as he entered into the other room. He could hear the creature moving around in the back, rummaging through shelves barely a few feet away. He crept closer until he was crouched right next to the gore-stained table. Holding his breath, for more reasons than one, he reached up—heartbeat pounding—and gripped his bloody hands around the rusty key.   
As he pulled it down it clacked against the metal hook it hung from.  
A visceral growl sounded from the back. A chainsaw revved.  
A fucking chainsaw.   
There was no time to even curse his luck. Sebastian stood and started to run, the creature close behind him. He pushed back through the dangling bodies as fast as he was able, but still they slowed him. The heavy footfalls of the creature sounded behind him, too close for comfort. The angry sound of the chainsaw drawing closer with every second.   
He made it to the door and shoved the key in the lock, hearing the bolt click.  
He was free.  
The chainsaw came down out of nowhere, severing his right arm from his body.   
Sebastian looked at his sawed-off arm which was still holding onto the handle of the door and screamed.   
The pain was unbearable. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. His vision grew spotted around the edges. He could feel the blood gushing from his stump. He could hear it splattering against the floor. It pooled around his feet, soaking into the soles of his shoes. There was so much blood.  
A meaty hand grabbed his shoulder in a crushing grip, shattering the bones there. Sebastian continued to scream, the sound not even registering in his own mind. He was thrown to the ground.   
FUCK, NO!  
The chainsaw came down like an executioner’s ax on his neck and…  
\---  
When Sebastian opened his eyes with a jolt he was nearly blinded by sunlight.  
“Ah, shit.” He muttered rubbing at his tired eyes. As he pushed himself up to a sitting position, he looked towards the scratches along the coffee table in front of him, some old stains on the worn carpet, and small, disguised dents in the walls and frowned. All of them were so familiar. This was… his living room?   
Damn. He must have fallen asleep on the couch again.  
Sebastian stretched out his protesting back before pulling himself up off the lumpy sofa. He looked down to his wrist to check the time, but he must have taken off his watch sometime last night. No matter, he and Lily would still be needing to be leaving soon to meet up with his parents. They were not typically patient people in his personal experience. Especially not where he was concerned.   
He walked to stand near the bottom of the stairs and called up to his daughter.  
“Lily, get up! You’re going to your grandparents today!”  
He didn’t wait for a response before moving into the kitchen. His next task would be to fix breakfast. Pancakes today? No. Just cereal would be fine. He felt like he hadn’t slept. He could feel the dark bags hanging heavily beneath his eyes.   
Sighing as he scrubbed his face with a calloused hand, he opened a cabinet and grabbed Lily’s choice of sugary sweet, tooth-rotting cereal along with his choice of generic, ‘old man’ cereal and set both boxes on the countertop. Then, he moved to the fridge for the milk.   
Oddly, he still couldn’t hear Lily’s feet pattering against the floor above him.  
“Lily! Come eat! We have to leave soon!” He called out, louder this time. Maybe she had not heard him.  
Sebastian opened another cabinet and grabbed two bowls, then, a drawer, taking out two spoons. He set all of these down next to the boxes of cereal and jug of milk.   
There was still no sound from Lily.  
“Lily?” He called out again. There was no way she wasn’t hearing him with all this yelling he was doing. She wasn’t a heavy sleeper.  
Sebastian’s irritation began to grow rather quickly. It was unlike Lily to ignore him like this. Cereal and milk forgotten, he marched himself back to the bottom of the steps.   
“Lily Castellanos, if you don’t get out of bed right now, so help me…!” He trailed off. What would he do? He had never really had to think of a punishment for this circumstance before. He let out a frustrated huff. Today was not the day. His poor sleep was only adding fuel to the proverbial fire.   
Still hearing nothing from Lily, Sebastian started climbing the stairs.   
“Lily you better be getting up right now—!” He turned to face her room and threw open the door.   
Sebastian was shocked to find no trace of Lily in her room at all, however, it was not empty. Sitting on her small twin bed, calm and poised as she gazed out the nearby window, was Myra.   
“Myra…” Sebastian gasped. He was not sure if he could believe what he was seeing.   
Myra smiled lightly towards him, basked in the glow of warm sunlight. “Hello, Sebastian.”  
Sebastian put his back to the wood of the door behind him and slid down to the floor. The world seemed to be spinning around him. He felt like he was going to pass out.   
“Myra…” he repeated for a second time before finding his words. “You can’t be here. You’re…”  
“Dead?” She finished for him when he could not.   
He nodded.  
“Well, I guess technically I am.” She remarked softly. “My corporeal body is dead at least. There is no way for me to return to the world outside of STEM.”  
“STEM?” Sebastian asked lamely.  
Myra raised one perfect blonde brow, “Where do you think you are, Sebastian?”  
With her words, he began to remember. He had done this before, hadn’t he? Woken up dead-tired from a night of sleeping on the couch, made cereal for himself and his daughter, dropped her off with his parents... so… did that mean…?  
“This is… STEM?”  
Myra smiled at him once again. The expression made his heart ache. “That’s right. Although, I didn’t expect to see you here.”  
So, he had actually made it then. Kidman had really pulled through.  
He looked into the face of his beautiful, smiling, dead wife.  
“Myra…”  
“I really wish you’d stop looking at me that way, Sebastian.”  
“Myra, you sacrificed everything. For me… for our little girl… you died. Why are you here? How are you here?” He asked, barely holding the emotion from his voice.  
Myra stood and walked across the room to where Sebastian sat, leaning against the door with his head in his hands. She placed a light hand on his shoulder. “Darling, I never died. I sacrificed my body, yes, but my consciousness lives here, in STEM, along with everyone else trapped down here. I am still very much ‘alive’.”  
“You’re trapped down here too? In this hell?”   
His wife gave a tinkling laugh, like soft windchimes on a summer day. She caressed his face with a sweep of her hand. “Does this look like hell to you?” She asked. “I am home.”   
Sebastian grabbed her hand from where it rested on his cheek and clutched it in both of his callused ones. He brought it to his lips and kissed her fingertips, her palm, her wedding ring still secure on her finger.   
“This isn’t home.” He told her. “Home is up there. With Lily… with me…”   
A tear leaked from the corner of his eye. She wiped it away.   
“Oh, Sebastian.” She didn’t say anything more, but her tone seemed resigned; final.   
He reached up and cupped her face in his hands.   
“Come with me, Myra.” He begged. “I came here to get Joseph out. I can get him, and I can get you too. We’ll be a family again. You, me and Lily. We’ll be so happy…”  
Myra’s smile turned sad as she removed his hands from her face. “I wish more than anything I could follow you out of here.”   
“You can—”  
“And where would I go, my love? Do you have a willing body waiting for me up there, or shall I hijack the nearest one available?” She asked, not unkindly. Her voice was soft and comforting. “There is no place left for me up there.”  
“It doesn’t matter.” He persisted, shaking his head. “We’ll find something. We’ll find a way—”  
“Enough, Sebastian.”  
“Myra—!”  
“Enough.” She repeated, calmly but powerfully. Sebastian fell silent. As Myra watched him, her smile turned sad and she ran and absentminded hand through his hair, ruffling it. Then, she asked: “How is Lily?”  
Sebastian’s reply got choked in his throat. “She’s perfect. So smart and so beautiful. I can already see she will grow up to be just like you.”  
Myra’s smile was blindingly brilliant. “I’m glad.”  
More tears leaked from the corners of Sebastian’s eyes as he returned her smile with a nod. “Me too.”   
Kissing him on the forehead, Myra stood.   
“I’m so glad to see you again, Sebastian, but it’s almost time for you to go.” She said as she moved back towards the bed.  
Sebastian got up to follow, grabbing for her wrist, but she moved too quickly. “What? No. I just got here! There’s so much I want to say to you! There’s so much I have to tell you…”  
“I’m sure there is, Darling. But, you came down here with a purpose, didn’t you?”   
“Yes,” He admitted taking another step closer, “but, I can afford to spend just a little more time here. With you.”   
Myra’s smile was sad again as she sat back down on Lily’s old mattress.   
“You cannot.” She told him plainly. “If you want to get out of here with Joseph intact you will have to move quickly. I’ve heard whispers from others that your friend is here. Although, he does not seem to be… in good health.”  
Sebastian was surprised. “You’ve heard others talking about Joseph? Where is he? Did they tell you?”  
“They say he is at the root of all of this.”   
“Can you be a little more specific?” He tried.  
“I’m sorry, Sebastian. I can’t say I understood everything they were talking about.” She replied sadly.  
“I see…”  
“But, I do know you will have to move quickly if you want to find him alive.” She warned.  
“I understand.” Sebastian walked closer to the bed until he was within arms reach of his wife. “I love you, Myra.” He proclaimed.  
She looked to him, her face as beautiful and perfect as he remembered. Soft golden hair loose from the bun she had previously kept it in, pouring delicately over her shoulders, the sun behind her forming a halo of light around her head. “I love you too.” She replied.  
Sebastian stood before her, leaned down and pressed a kiss to her lips. “Always.” He whispered.  
“Always.” She returned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Joseb is endgame I promise >.<
> 
> Did I end two different chapters with two characters repeating each other... maybe...


	3. An Old Friend

Myra placed a familiar looking radio into Sebastian’s hands, then bid him farewell.

He left his house through the front door, stepped over the threshold and away from his wife once again. Before seeing her here, he had felt closure. His wife had been dead. He was to move on with Lily. But now, it was like a door he had thought bolted shut had been thrown open. All that filled his mind now was Myra and it took everything he had to give to walk away from her this time.

_‘It’s what she wants.’_ An unwelcome thought nagged.

 And, really, that’s all that held him at bay. To bring her back would mean pushing her into another’s body, as hers was no longer available to her. Myra would never be okay with doing something like that and if he ever allowed it to transpire, she would never forgive him.

As he reached the end of the driveway, he turned to catch one last glimpse of what he was leaving behind.

But, it was gone.

Like a mirage, the house had disappeared into nothingness, like it had never been there at all, taking his wife along with it.

Sebastian cursed.

The scenery around him had completely changed. Now, instead of standing at the end of his driveway, he was in the middle of a street, dark asphalt beneath the soles of his shoes. Tall city buildings had risen up around him, towering over his head like concrete giants.

A horn blasted from in front of him, a deafening roar in his ears.

Sebastian lept out of the way just as a school bus rumbled passed continuing down the otherwise deserted street. He watched in shock as it moved, swerving, down another block, before turning suddenly and sharply right, flipping the bus to its side and smashing it against the front of a building that sat nearby. It caught fire.

What the fuck?

The bus door, now pointing upwards, began shaking as something pounded heavily against it from the inside. It rattled and clanked while Sebastian stood locked in place. After a few tense seconds, the glass on the door shattered and three pairs of rotting, bloodstained hands shot out of the vehicle, their nail-less fingers scrabbling angrily at the sky. A deep chorale of wet growling grew. The claws gripped against the sides of the bus as the creatures inside began to pull themselves out. Bus windows began to smash as more gore-stained hands appeared and finally the windshield cracked, and the rotting beings poured out from within. There had to be at least ten of them, and all he currently held in his position was a cheap radio.

Sebastian finally began to move.

He turned quickly and ran for the nearest building. As his feet pounded against the black asphalt of the road, the horror-show of creatures quickly became aware of his presence. They all turned in unison, a sickly mass, a single, writhing organism. They began towards him with an animalistic battle cry.

He made it to an entrance, only a few meters from where he stood previously, and tried the door. But, no matter how hard he yanked, it would not open.

Shit.

Because he could not afford to waste time on a lost cause, he bolted from one door to the next, pulling and pushing every one. Each time becoming more rushed. None of them opened to him. Behind him, the horde grew. Their screeching drew in others from nearby. The larger they grew, the closer they seemed to come. Their bodies pushing and shoving against one another in chaotic rhythm. Ravenous, they writhed. Creatures in search of blood.

Why was every door fucking locked?

He banged his fist against his 7th attempt at an entrance to safety.

Goddamn it.

He could hear the barbed wire that was tightly wound around swollen, rotting limbs scrape against the pavement with a metallic scream.

Fuck.

A gunshot pierced the air and the glass of the door in front of him blew apart.

“ _GO_!” He heard a yell from somewhere behind him. More gunshots followed. He could hear each bullet hit its mark in the ruined flesh of those things.

Sebastian did not hesitate.

Shoving his hand through the broken glass, he felt around for the lock. The shards still clinging to the doorframe dug into his arms and his blood flowed out freely. He ignored the sting.

After what felt like an eternity, his probing fingers found the deadbolt knob. He turned it and pushed open the door.

“Wait!”

He held it just long enough for his savior to run past, then twisted the bolt back into place. The broken door wouldn’t hold those things back for long, but it might buy them a couple of seconds. The claws of the horde were already pushing through the shattered frame, demanding entry.

“This way.” His new companion ordered, starting towards the stairwell of the building. As he moved through the lobby, he couldn’t help but noticed how trashed this building was. The front desk was ransacked, the chairs were flipped over to their sides and piled up in his way. Cushions from them had been thrown all the way across the small room. He had to be conscious of where he was stepping so he wouldn’t trip over anything.

“Did some giant baby throw a tantrum in here?” He asked his companion’s ponytail, which seemed, in a way, weirdly familiar.

“Keep moving.” They didn’t sound amused. 

Sebastian acquiesced to the silent request for silence and followed to the stairwell. It was dark, each of the bulbs in this area either blown out or flickering, making it awfully hard to catch a glimpse of his savior’s face.

“Who are you?” He tried, giving up on the silence he had previously agreed to silently.

“The person who just saved your ass.” They shot back. “Now, shut up and keep moving unless you’d rather become those things’ next meal.”

Sebastian kept moving.

His companion led him up passed the second and third floor before finally stopping at the fourth. They, then, pushed him into what seemed to be a medium-sized space.

He could hear a lead pipe rattling as his companion jammed the door in place.

“What is this place?” He asked, searching around in the dark.

“It’s my safe house.” They replied. “Although, it’s not so safe now, thanks to you. I had to blow out my fucking front door.”

Sebastian nodded in acknowledgment of the sacrifice. “Thanks for that, by the way.”

“No problem.”

He could hear the other moving around in the dark. “You got any power in this place? It’s fucking—”

Sebastian heard the throw of a switch and a generator whirling to life. The room was bathed in a muted fluorescent light. They were standing in what seemed to be an office space, except it was filled to bursting with weaponry and explosives. Computers had been piled up in a far corner of the room to make space for all the goddamn guns.

 “What?” The woman in front of him teased. “Not into mood lighting?”

Sebastian stood frozen in shock.

“Torres?”

Esmeralda Torres smiled widely at him. “Miss me?”

She was still wearing the same clothes that she had died in.

“Fuck.” He cursed. “How did you end up here?”

Torres set down the automatic rifle she was holding onto one of the nearby desks, which was already buried under a mountain of other guns. “Beats me.” She replied. “One second I was blacking out there and the next I was waking up here. Thought I was in hell.” She began taking apart the rifle to clean it. “Still kind of do.”

“Well, I just met someone who felt the complete opposite.” Sebastian muttered to himself, but Torres still picked up on it and replied with: “Really? What the hell kind of psychopath would want to live here?”

“Watch it,” Seb warned.

She held up her hands in surrender, looking oddly reminiscent of Kidman.

Shit. Kidman.

“I have to make a call.”

Torres nodded. “Be my guest.”

He walked further away, stepping over an army’s worth of weaponry, for some attempted privacy before bringing the clunky, black box of a radio to his lips. “Kidman? You there?” He asked.

The reply was instantaneous.

“Sebastian? Oh, thank God, you made it.” The relief in her voice was palpable. He was struck by how nice it was to hear Kidman’s voice.

“I guess you could say that.” He responded wearily. God. He had only just got here, and he was already tired.

It only took a handful of seconds before she was asking: “What’s it like?” Curiosity seemed to be getting the best of her.

Sebastian paused before telling her. “I saw Myra.”

“What?”

“She’s down here.” He reported more calmly than he felt. “Along with… others that died while in STEM.”

“Holy shit.”

“Yeah.”

A pause fell over the line.

“What did she say?”

Sebastian sighed heavily, scrubbing down his face as he remembered his conversation with his wife. “She can’t get out of here. And Joseph apparently hasn’t been doing well for himself.”

Kidman hummed. “You better find him fast.” She advised, pointedly ignoring the first part, to which he was secretly thankful.

“I’m trying my best.”

“Good. Good luck, Sebastian.” She offered. “And be careful.”

“Roger that.”

When Kidman didn’t make any response, Seb clipped the radio to his belt.

“You done?” Torres called over.

“Yeah.” He called back. “Thanks.”

He moved back over to her and sat down in one of the swivel chairs as she continued to play with her ‘toys’. She had moved from cleaning to packing, grabbing a duffle off the ground nearby and shoving supplies inside.

Torres looked up from her work to where he was swiveling. “So, you gonna tell me how you got here or am I gonna have to ask?”

Blandly he replied, “Same as anyone gets here. In a bathtub.”

“Don’t get smart.” She said rolling her eyes at him. “There have been whispers down here. Whispers that STEM is gone. Destroyed.”

There sure has been a lot of whispering going on here, he thought sullenly to himself.

“It was Kidman. She got the thing working again.”

“Kidman? I knew her once. Or, knew _about_ her.” Torres seemed to get lost in her own thoughts, murmuring more to herself than to him. “I wonder if she would remember me…”

Sebastian pulled her back on track.

“What can you tell me about this place? What do I need to expect?”

Torres sighed, returning to herself. “Well,” She answered, “its hell.” Then she added: “For me anyway. I hear for others it's worse.” She broke off for a moment to find the right words. “You know how Union was…” She made a ‘falling-apart’ motion with her hands.

Sebastian nodded.

“Well, here it's not so much crumbling to pieces as it is… stitched together.”

“Stitched?” Sebastian raised an eyebrow at her.

“That’s the best way I can describe it.” She tried to reason.

“I’m gonna need a little bit better than that.”

She huffed, finally giving up on packing and pushing the duffle away altogether, focusing on him. “Fine. My guess is: because there is no core now, everyone’s minds are sharing this space. You walk ten feet and fall into someone else’s subconscious. Stitched together.”

“Got it.”

“Good. Now, any more questions?” She asked.

“Just one.” He retorted. “How am I supposed to find anyone in this place.”

She raised her brow at him this time. “Looking for someone?”

“Why else would I be here?” He shot back.

She shrugged. “You shouldn’t answer a question with a question. It’s rude.”

“I’ll try to remember.”

She gave him a look but otherwise ignored his sass. “Who are you looking for?”

“My partner. Joseph.”

Torres’ eyes grew round as the ‘dancing Santa’ dinner plates Myra used to use on Christmas. “Oh. No offense, but I thought you had a wife.”

Sebastian jolted as if shocked.

“What?! No! My partner detective, not my— no.”

Torres snorted. “Woah, sorry, bud. No need to get defensive. I said no offense.”

“Whatever,” Sebastian replied sourly, brain sending out alarm bells to get the fuck back on track. “You didn’t—you never answered my question.”

“How you’re supposed to find your guy?”

He didn’t enjoy the tone which she used to say ‘your guy’ but he let it slide. “Yeah.”

“You walk.”

Sebastian stared at her.

“What? You thought I was gonna have a map leading you straight for… what was his name?”

“Joseph.” He supplied.

“Yeah. Joseph.”

 Sebastian’s frown grew deeper. “Don’t patronize me.”

“I’m not.” She responded, placing a hand over her heart. “Scouts honor. You walk until you reach his personal hell… or… whatever. Personal STEM, I guess.”

“And how long is that going to take?”

She shrugged for the second time in five minutes. For someone who had been down here for months, she didn’t seem to know very much, which was a little annoying. “I don’t know. I’ve never gone looking for anyone down here.”

“Comfortable?” He asked.

“You could say that.”

“So, then, that must be this hell is yours.” He said motioning towards the world outside the office building. “I would’ve thought it would look more like a war zone, honestly.”

“Well, what can I say. There’s no sort of hell like familial bonds.”

“Is that supposed to be an aphorism?”

She didn’t say anything.

He tried again. “So this is your home turf?”

“Got it in one.”

“Guessing there is a story here.” He pursued.

“One you’re not going to be hearing.” She volleyed.

Sebastian knew enough about past trauma to know when to back off.  “Right.” He stood because he also knew when a conversation was over, and this one had ended twenty seconds ago. “So, how do we get out of this place.”

Torres picked the duffle back up from where it had landed on the floor. It looked heavy. “Ah, the million-dollar question.”

He didn’t like the sound of that.

“So, you have no clue.”

She tutted. “Not so. I have no clue if we will _survive_.”

Of course, they would. Sebastian Castellanos wasn’t going to die like some chump to a bunch of second-rate zombies. With the utmost confidence, he said: “Of course we will. You have me.”

“Yes. Because that worked out so well for me last time.”

Well, shit. He walked into that one.

A sort of “awkwardly guilty” silence followed, weighing heavy in the air. Torres broke it.

“Oh, don’t get all gushy on me now. You know,” She continued with a sinister smile, “I’m not even sure its possible to die down here. I mean, where else is there to go?”

Sebastian did not want to have this conversation, so he said: “I don’t want to have this conversation.”

Unfortunately, Torres soldiered on despite his protest.

“I mean you would technically die since you’ve got a body waiting for you up there. But me? I think I’m safe. No body is holding me back.” She winked, grinning with all her teeth, duffle slung over one shoulder, as she made her way towards the windows along the outer wall of the room.

“Thanks for the morale booster.” He followed behind.

“Anytime!” She unlatched one of the windows and pulled it open. It led to a dilapidated fire escape that looked like it would crumble to pieces as soon as he took one step onto it. “After you.” She said with a sweep of her arm.

He eyed the exit warily. “Shouldn’t it be ‘ladies first’?”

She gave a loud “Ha!” and then slapped him on the back. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

Why did he ever miss this woman anyway?

He stepped wobbly out onto the rusted escape route. The entire metal structure groaned out its protest. Even though they were only a mere four stories up, it was windier than ground level, and with each brush of the breeze, he could feel the rickety death trap tilt and shift. For pride’s sake, with Torres’ watching his back, he continued to move towards the ground.

When he was halfway there, Torres whisper-yelled down to him, “Doing alright, old man?”

A grown from some lingering undead in the alleyways nearby sounded in reply. Seb shot up a glare before starting down the final ladder to the “safety” of solid ground. He didn’t like the way the rungs creaked under his weight, and the red rust sluffing off them was uncomfortably granny against his palms.

When he was about two feet from the ground, without any warning, the rung he was standing on snapped and he landed ass first on the concrete below.

Torres snorted. Some absent growling sounded off in the distance. He cursed his lot in life.

Torres successfully made it to the ground without any incident and, upon arrival, produced a weapon from her bag.

“Here.” She pushed it towards him.

The pistol was a familiar weight in his hands. The cold metal kissed his fingertips in sweet reunion as he inspected the tool. Fuck he had missed having a gun.

“Thanks.” He slipped the weapon into his empty holster. “Now. Which way?”


	4. Memories

They didn’t have to walk far before falling into the next subconscious.

“Shit. Fuck.” Sebastian cursed under his breath as the world shifted and changed around him. It was fucking disorienting. He could hear Torres snorting at him from up ahead but other than that she didn’t comment further. He imagined she didn’t mind the shifty gravity just so long as she was able to be out of her own mind for once.

Dirt, or more accurately mud, replaced the concrete underneath their feet. To Sebastian’s frustration, his shoes immediately began to sink messily into the earth, already coating them up to the sides with grime. The skyscrapers which had hung overhead had dissolved into thin air as if turned to smoke and a smattering of ugly trees took their place. Directly ahead, a centuries-old brick and rotten-wood house sat surrounded by a crumbling fence that was currently being reclaimed by the foliage.

Why was everything in this place so fucking creepy?

And, why did it feel like he had been here before?

Whatever. Nothing in this place made any fucking sense anyway.

He could hear Torres mumbling about the state of the house to herself as they continued to trudge forward through the muddy path. Sebastian tried to think of anything else besides how he could now feel the filth of the road reaching up to collect on the hem of his trousers.

The closer they got to the house, however, the easier that became.

He could no longer ignore the feeling of wrongness rising within him. He had definitely been here before, but _when_? Everything about this place was familiar except for when and where he had last seen it. It was like the memory was there in his mind, but something was obstructing it. He could feel it, but not reach it.

“Sebastian? Are you okay?”

The detective blinked as the world around him regained his focus. They had reached the large front door of the abandoned house. Torres was watching him carefully, eyebrows knitted together in confusion. He must have been standing there, staring blankly ahead, for a while now.

Sebastian shook his head. “I’m fine. Let’s keep moving.”

Torres nodded and stepped closer to the door. “I think I hear something coming from inside. Sounds like…” She leaned in to listen through the rotten wood, “singing?”

Sebastian frowned and leaned in as well, placing his ear just before the door. Sure enough, the soft hum of a melody was floating out from within.

He reached for his weapon.

Torres nodded and followed his lead, pulling out her own. She moved back to cover him from behind as Sebastian pushed open the door.

It smelled like blood. The stench was strong, but he found himself unbothered by it. After all, this was his third time down in STEM, a place where everything was bloody all the time.

He looked to see how Torres was handling it. She seemed similarly unfazed.

They moved onwards.

The place was a dump. Paint was peeling off the walls, which were decomposing. Anything made of wood was rotting to nothing. Anything made of metal was rusted to hell. The floors, try as they might to stay silent, squeaked and whined under any amount of pressure. To their right, was a fireplace. To their left, a flight of stairs and a hallway leading deeper inside.

The humming was louder now, floating out from within.

Sebastian turned to motion for Torres to follow him into the hallway, but she was no longer the one standing beside him.

Sebastian blinked. “…Jimenez?”

The balding doctor looked at him confused.

“Sebastian? Sebastian are you okay?” Jimenez asked, concern laced in his voice. The doctor placed a hand on Sebastian’s shoulder. Sebastian shoved him away harshly.

“Don’t…!”

But, the man who stumbled away from him was no longer Jimenez.

“S-seb…”

Joseph stood before him covered in blood from head to toe. Lacerations were woven into every visible inch of his skin. His clothes looked like they had been through a shredder. Sebastian’s partner reached for him weakly, stumbling forward into his arms.

“Joseph…!” Sebastian clutched at his partner, wrapping his arms securely around him, pinning him to his chest. Joseph’s body was trembling, his hands grasping at Sebastian’s shirt, everywhere he touched coming back bloody. Sebastian could feel the slick heat of his partner's blood soaking into his clothes. Into his skin. “Stay with me, Joseph.”

“Se-eb…it’s cold…” Joseph’s voice was barely even a whisper. The rise and fall of this chest became more and more faint.

“Joseph!”

“Sebastian!” Someone smacked him in the face.

Sebastian’s vision cleared enough for him to see he was kneeling on the ground in front of a very concerned Torres. Joseph was no longer in his arms.

“Torres?”

A throaty growl replaced the incessant humming in the background of the room.

“Shit.” Torres picked up her gun off of the ground and faced down whatever was coming up from behind Sebastian. She began to fire.

Sebastian crawled on shaky limbs to the other side of the room to lean heavily against a decomposing wall. His vision was blurry and everything sounded as if he were hearing it from underwater. He could still see his partners blood staining his hands and clothes.

_Joseph._

It hadn’t been real, but Joseph had been in his arms. Sebastian had felt his weight. Had felt _him._ And now he was gone again, and Sebastian couldn’t breathe.

_It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real._

“…bas…n…”

“Sebas…n…”

“Sebastian!”

Torres was kneeling in front of him and shaking at his shoulders. Looking down, the only blood on him now was the bloody residue coming off of Torres’ fingers.

“Sebastian, you’ve got to come back, okay? I need you to come back.” She was babbling inches away from his face. She looked scared.

Sebastian pushed her hands away.

“I’ve got it.” He grumbled, a little embarrassed though he would never admit to it. “I’m fine.”

Torres leaned back from him and sighed in relief.

“Shit, Sebastian. _Shit_. I really thought you were gonna turn or something.” She complained placing a hand to her forehead. Some blood—not her own—streaked where her fingers touched. “You scared the shit out of me.”

The detective looked past her to the massive body collapsed against the floor. Torres followed his gaze.

“Nobody special.” She said indicating the corpse. “He went down pretty easy. But, his head is all fucked up. And I don’t think that blood is his.”

Sebastian moved unsteadily to his feet, allowing Torres to help get him completely upright. He walked over to the body to inspect it. All he had was one glance before déjà vu pierced his skull again, dragging him down into a memory.

He knew this man.

He had killed him before.

\---

_Sebastian moved around the room divider cautiously, Jimenez at his back. He stepped lightly across creaky boards, trying to be as silent as physically possible._

_“Hush, hush…Don’t you fret…” He could hear someone mumbling._

_Sebastian peered through cracks in the divide, rotted wood giving way for him to see a little of what was happening beyond. There was a man in a waistcoat working in front of a table._

_His first thought was that it must be Jimenez’s brother. However, it bothered the detective that he couldn’t see what the other man was working on exactly. He could hear a sickening squelch, squelch, squelch…something being squeezed. Not to mention the tell-tale scent of gore on the air. He had more than one reason to be set on edge._

_Jimenez did not seem to feel the same way._

_“Doc, no, don’t…” Sebastian protested as the doctor marched past him to address the man in the adjacent space. Jimenez paid no mind to his objections._

_“Valerio, it’s me!” He spoke, glad to be reunited with his brother. Sebastian wondered quietly how long that would last. He cringed at the other man’s caviler approach to all this, not even taking into account they should be the least bit careful. He was going to get them both killed._

_Valerio did not respond to Jimenez’s call, but Jimenez continued on with the introductions anyhow going on to inform Sebastian: “This is my brother, Valerio, Leslie’s original doctor…” The doc cut himself off with a gasp, however, as he seemed to take in whatever was happening around the corner._

_Sebastian picked up the pace and ran to stand in front of Jimenez._

_He was disgusted._

_Valerio was bent over a dead man up to his elbow inside the corpse’s chest. He was scraping out the inside of the man’s body like one would scrape out the inside of a pumpkin for carving. The floor at his feet was covered in discarded organ and muscle. Every time he reached in to scoop out more, the pile at his feet seemed to double in size._

_“Peel away…Expose everything…” Valerio was repeating in a mantra, his back turned towards the doctor and detective. The skin of his fat neck looked similar to the pallor of the skin on the corpse._

_Unsure, Sebastian reached a hand down to his gun. “Hey,” He called, “What are you doing?”_

_Valerio froze at the sound and a low growl hummed through the air around them._

_Sebastian braced himself, throwing one arm out to push Jimenez back and rising his weapon with the other._

_Valerio turned._

_\---_

“Sebastian? Hellooo?” Torres called, waving her hand in front of his face. Sebastian blinked rapidly and swatted the hand away. “Damn it, man. You’ve got to stop doing that. You’re freaking me out.”

“Yeah.” He agreed. It was starting to freak him out as well.

“Come on, let's get out of here,” Torres said, pulling him towards the exit. But, something else caught his attention as he was being dragged to the door. Sebastian shook her off.

“Wait, _wait_. Listen.”

Torres stopped.

Both of them turned and listened as the soft sound of sobbing was carried out from the hallway. Torres looked to Sebastian for direction. Sebastian tilted his head towards the noise and started walking forward. He could here Torres cocking her weapon once again, but this time she kept it aimed to the floor, unsure.

He stepped through the archway leading to the hall, pushing some ratty cloth that was hanging there out of the way.

The hallway beyond was not a long one, unsurprisingly. It was the same hallway that Sebastian had walked down with Jimenez in his memory. Probably twenty paces to the end, and to the left the same rotting divider separated them from whatever was crying on the other side. Sebastian didn’t have to much use his imagination to determine why that was. From the cracks in the divider, he could see that whoever it was, was laid out on that same metal table Valerio’s victim had been sprawled across before.

Torres, at his back, nudged him forward.  

Sebastian rounded the corner of the divide, unconcerned about stealth, and looked upon the table that lay before him.

It was Jimenez.

His clothes were peeled away and an incision had been made from his chin to his crotch. From there, Sebastian could see that Valerio pried the wound open with large, rusted pieces of metal, stabbing down through the excess skin to hold him open. His ribcage had been broken and spread so that one could easily see the organs inside, and easily reach them. Some of them were already carved out, now tossed around at the base of the table, splattering the floor red. Jimenez was moaning and sobbing, tears streaming down sallow cheeks, his hands helplessly grasping at the metal holding open his body, trying to repair the damage done to him.

“I’m going to be sick.” Torres choked out from behind him.

The doctor noticed them. Looking to Sebastian he began to plead weakly, “…h-he…lp……hel-lp…me…” He continued to wriggle and writhe in agony on the table.

“What the fuck do we do?” Torres asked.

Sebastian reached for his gun and aimed at the other man’s head.

\---

“Fuck, fuck, _fuck_!” Torres yelled as soon as they were back out of the house. “What the fuck was that!”

Sebastian didn’t say anything. After a while, one assumes that they’d seen the worst the world had to offer, and maybe they had, but this wasn’t the world. This was hell. And he had an awful feeling like they were just getting started.

“Let’s get the hell out of here.” Torres marched down the path, away from the house, in the opposite direction they had begun in. Mud splashed up around her where she stomped, but it didn’t really matter anymore. Both of them walked in solemn silence as the world, once again, began to twist and change around them.

They were now in Union once again.  


End file.
